Women Baffled by 'Gentle' Friend's Murderous Side

By BARBARA STEWART

Published: August 31, 1998

Joanne Donovan remembers how Gary Evans, her friend and lover for eight years, ate. He was like a 10-year-old, she said, subsisting on gallons of milk and boxes of Cocoa Puffs and Freihofer's chocolate-chip cookies.

Robbin Evans, his sister, remembers how he skateboarded with her son and bounced on a trampoline as joyously as a child.

Several other women who knew Mr. Evans described him as quiet, gentle and caring. He bolstered their confidence. He liked to draw mountains and write poems about freedom and the stars and pure love.

But the police in Rensselaer County say something very different: that Gary C. Evans, a professional antiques thief, was a brutal multiple murderer who killed five men as coldly and deliberately as an executioner.

Jailed in May on charges relating to a theft, Mr. Evans, 43, confessed to each of these killings over the summer, the police say, revealing the details bit by bit and directing officers to the graves he had dug. Reports about the Evans case appeared all summer in local newspapers and on the TV news. To people in Troy, a once-thriving industrial center about 15 miles north of Albany, and throughout Rensselaer County, the story was riveting.

And two weeks ago, on the way from an Albany courthouse to the jail in Troy, Mr. Evans provided a spectacular ending. Shackled hand and foot, he kicked out the window of a police van, jumped out, hobbled to the edge of a bridge, and plunged 65 feet to his death in the rocky shallows of the Hudson River. In a note to his lawyer, opened after his death, he had written: ''Stars surround me and peace and love are mine. They cannot be taken or touched. I win.''

Later, an autopsy revealed that Mr. Evans had hidden a handcuff key in one nostril and a sliver of razor in the other. The bizarre tale was reported around the country -- often with an old photo of Mr. Evans, naked to the waist, displaying the physique of a bodybuilder. At home, the most common reactions were anger and relief. Some people were outraged that a killer in custody had managed to orchestrate his death under the noses of police guards, but nearly everybody was relieved to be rid of him.

Amid the exclamations, however, some quieter voices emerged: a dozen or more women who had been Mr. Evans's friends, and, in some cases, lovers. They expressed shock and horror at the killings. The person they were mourning, from their descriptions, was the opposite of a ruthless killer.

Of course, Mr. Evans would not be the first killer with female friends and relatives who loved him and knew his better qualities. But the range of Mr. Evans's behavior was unusual, according to professionals who work closely with murderers. They say he killed with the easy viciousness of a disturbed child dismembering a bug.

Yet his female friends remember him as a sympathetic listener who went out of his way to encourage and help them. ''A woman and kid protector,'' said Ms. Evans, his sister.

Ms. Donovan, 34, said: ''He was very affectionate and sweet to my daughter. He liked to play Nintendo with her. He was always happy, always energetic. He made me feel good.''

Women who knew him as a teen-ager said that in some ways he was as wholesome as a Boy Scout. At parties, when others were drinking beer and smoking marijuana, he would bring a quart of milk to drink, one woman said. Then and later, he refused to touch meat or alcohol or drugs, even aspirin.

''We called him Owl, the wisest,'' said one 39-year-old woman, a state administrator in Albany.

Shortly after the death of Mr. Evans, a 34-year-old woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described an affair she had with him 10 years ago. She was a young mother trapped in a bad marriage when she met him at a local pub and agreed to see him. He took her to art museums and bought her son a red tricycle. But mainly, he urged her to leave her abusive husband and discussed the logistics of finding an apartment, a job and drawing up a budget.

''He gave me the courage to go out and make a new life for myself and my son,'' she said. After nine months, she left her husband. Within a week or so, Mr. Evans disappeared, she said.

Now, she said, she is happily remarried and has a good job. ''This man made me believe in myself again,'' she said. ''I was going down the tubes. He gave me back my self-esteem. I could never repay him.''

At the time that he was restoring her confidence, Mr. Evans committed his first murder. The victim, Michael Falco, 30, had grown up in his neighborhood and occasionally lent him a hand during thefts. After shooting Mr. Falco in the head to keep him from talking about a burglary, he stuffed the body in the trunk of his car, drove to Lake Worth, Fla., and buried it. Investigators found the body this summer.

Mr. Evans's long-ago lover said she felt numb, trying to fit the killer with the caring friend she knew.

''It's night and day, good and evil,'' she said. ''I feel so much sympathy for those victims. But I can't envision him as a murderer. How can he be so kind and yet so brutal?''